Descriptive Analysis of Network Structures

This chapter of the textbook will introduce a short history of networks, across disciplines in general, and psychology in particular. The chapter will discuss the differences between the settings of network science (the focus of this chapter) and network psychometrics (the focus of the remainder of the book). The readers will familiarize themselves with descriptive analyses of network structures through quantifying local network properties such as centrality and clustering of nodes, as well as global network properties such as the density, transitivity and small-worldness of a network.